Environmental value performance indicators

CO₂ efficiency

PostNL CO₂ efficiency
2015 - 2019, as indicated

As a postal and logistic solutions provider, it is clear we have an impact on the environment, and that our operations emit carbon as well as other emissions. In the chapter 'Environmental value', we explained our strategy to reduce our environmental impact. In our risk management process we evaluate physical, regulatory and reputational climate change-related risks. We identified that our main risks relate to not meeting our long-term reduction targets. No significant physical and regulatory risks were identified during 2019.

As a result of our new, scienced-based emission reduction targets towards 2030, we introduced two new key performance indicators to monitor our progress in reducing environmental impact. We set a target to improve the CO₂ efficiency of our own operations by 80% in 2030, compared to the base year 2017. We report annually on the relative difference in total CO ₂ emissions of our own operations (buildings and transport) per transported kilometre compared to 2017. We also introduced a target to deliver 100% of our mail and parcels in the last-mile in the Benelux, which we report as the share of emission-free kilometres. This includes kilometres from our own operations and of our delivery partners and includes also the collection of mail and parcels with small trucks and vans and other light electric vehicles.

Since 2017, we unfortunately have not been able to improve our CO₂ efficiency. Over the past few years we have built up a substantial fleet of small biogas trucks and vans. We faced challenges in the availability of biogas vehicles with the right specifications, which meant we had to switch back to diesel vehicles for part of our fleet. In addition, we achieved substantial growth of our transport activities in our core parcel network, and through the acquisition of two entities since 2017, JP Haarlem and Mostert Verkerk. This increased the share of kilometres transported by heavy vehicles. While we continuously seek to invest in low carbon vehicles where possible, we are also exploring the expansion of renewable fuels, such as biodiesel and bio-LNG . At the same time, we are testing electric vehicles in parts of our network and preparing the charging infrastructure across the Benelux. We rely on manufacturers being able to produce vehicles to the correct specifications at economically viable prices if we are to electrify our fleet. Despite this, we expect to significantly increase our own electric delivery fleet in the coming years.

The share of emission-free last-mile delivery of mail and parcels was 19% in 2019, which was mainly a result of the over 44 million kilometres we travelled by foot and bicycle to deliver mail in the Netherlands. This was a slight improvement on 2018, due to an increase in city deliveries by e-cargo bikes . We also started to replace vans with electric motor cycles and e(-cargo) bikes in our mail operations. We expect to see a further increase when we implement the next phase of the New mail route.

More information about our CO₂ efficiency initiatives can be found in the chapter 'Environmental value'.

Energy consumption

PostNL Energy consumption
2015 - 2019, as indicated

The energy we consumed in our buildings significantly decreased compared to prior years. One main reason is the improvement in data quality as we began to use automatic telemetric activity data in our reporting in 2019. The decrease in energy consumption compared to 2018 was mainly driven by increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings.

We continued to install LED-lighting in our sorting centres, which cuts lighting energy consumption in these buildings by around 50%. We also improved our data quality for a number of small buildings by collecting and reporting more data automatically compared to previous years. The actual data indicated lower energy use from these buildings than we would have reported based on estimations.

Energy consumption of our own fleet increased by 54 TJ in 2019 compared to 2018. This increase is mainly due to the increasing volumes in our parcel network, requiring more transport activity from large trucks. In addition, due to the lack of availability of low-carbon vehicles, we had to deliver additional volumes at Parcels primarily with diesel vans, which are more energy intensive. The reduction of of our mail volumes and growth of e-cargo bikes only partly offsets this increase.

The expected growth in our activities will likely result in a higher energy demand in coming years. We aim to minimise this by being as efficient as possible in our operations. At the same time, we focus on using fewer energy intensive vehicles. For our electricity demand, we continue to invest in solar panels to generate as much renewable energy as possible ourselves. This not only reduces our environmental impact, but also stabilises our cost base in an increasingly volatile energy market.

Energy efficiency of buildings

PostNL Buildings
2015 - 2019, as indicated

The vast majority of our energy demand comes from electricity. As a result of our investments in solar panels on all three of our new parcel sorting centres, the share of sustainably generated electricity increased from 4% to 6%. This represents more than 40% of the electricity needs of our parcel sorting centres.

In 2018, we saw an increase in energy consumption per square metre as a result of merging sorting activities within Mail in the Netherlands, and an increase in the utilisation of our parcel sorting centres. The improved efficiency in 2019 is partly explained by the increased share of extremely energy-efficient buildings (our three new parcel sorting centres have all been certified BREEAM Outstanding ) and partly through a reduction of reported activity data due to data quality improvements. Mild weather conditions also led to lower energy use when heating buildings.

Energy efficiency of fleet

PostNL Fleet
2015 - 2019, as indicated

The energy consumption of our small and large trucks increased substantially during 2019. For small trucks and vans this was a result of our strategic choice to deliver a higher share of the parcel routes ourselves. In addition, the ongoing volume growth resulted in more energy consumed. We see the same trend for our large trucks, where the growth of 14.4% in 2019 was in line with the volume growth at Parcels, and now includes the energy consumption of Mostert Verkerk, an entity we acquired in January 2019.

The relative energy per kilometre increased by 2%, meaning that our energy consumption grew slightly faster than our transported kilometres. The main reason for this increase is related to the increase in the load factor of our vehicles, which means we transport less air but more weight on average per kilometre.

Air quality

PostNL Air pollution from fleet
2015 - 2019, as indicated

The developments in air quality are directly related to the type of vehicles we use. Therefore, the explanation of trends in the table above is combined with the explanation in trend in the table on our compliance with euro norms below.

PostNL Compliance with Euro emission norms
2015 - 2019, share per Euro norm

In 2019, we further increased the combined percentage of vehicles complying with Euro 6 emission standards. In large trucks, we saw a slight decrease in the percentage of Euro 6 vehicles, caused by acquiring Euro 5 trucks from transport company Mostert Verkerk.

During the year we extended our fleet of cleaner small trucks and vans, improving our NO_x efficiency to 0.42 (2018: 0.43). This improvement resulted in both lower NO_x (nitrous oxides) and PM₁₀ (soot) emissions per kilometer. Even though our relative emissions were lower than in 2018, the absolute emissions of our fleet increased. The increase in absolute emissions was caused by more kilometers driven due to the growth of our business. In 2020, we will continue to invest in large trucks fueled by liquified natural gas (LNG), which will further reduce our NO_x and PM₁₀ emissions. The scale up of our electric fleet will help us improve our absolute emissions, which is one of the elements covered in our Sustainable City Logistics programme. The scale up of electric vehicles is expected by around 2025.

Carbon footprint

PostNL Carbon footprint
2015 - 2019, in kilotonnes CO_2e

Scope 1

Our gross scope 1 emissions increased in 2019. The 3 kilotonnes increase is mainly related to the carbon emissions of our large trucks, due to the higher volumes of parcels we transported. With the available fuels we use, these large trucks are CO₂ intensive. To partly counter this development, we aim to expand our large truck LNG fleet in 2020. In addition, we had to invest in more diesel driven small trucks and vans to capture growth, leading to an increase in emissions. During 2019, it proved challenging to find biogas vehicles that meet our operational requirements and the electric delivery van market is still developing, making it hard to find electric alternatives that meet our demands. We are looking into investing in more renewable fuel types, for example bio-diesel and bio-LNG, to help us realise improvements more quickly, as we do not expect a significant scale up of our electric fleet in the coming three years. Due to less gas-heated buildings and less gas consumption due to weather influence, the CO₂ emissions from natural gas decreased by 1 kilotonne.

Scope 2

Our gross scope 2 emissions remained stable at 0 kilotonnes in 2019 (2018: 0). Our nominal electricity consumption decreased to 77 million kWh in 2019 (2018: 88 million kWh). The reasons for the decrease have been detailed in the section 'Energy efficiency of buildings'. We stimulate the use of sustainable electricity in our buildings and use the market-based instrument of purchasing Guarantees of Origin to ensure our electricity consumption is based on renewable energy. This resulted in gross scope 2 emissions of 0.

Scope 3

Our gross scope 3 emissions decreased to 187 kilotonnes in 2019 (2018: 194 kilotonnes) and relate to the emissions from our external delivery partners. The decrease in 2019 can be explained by:

• A decline in international freight CO₂ emissions resulting from a decline in internatonal freight; in 2019, a total of 68 million kilos was shipped compared to 75 million in 2018. From this, air freight emissions contributed the largest share of CO₂ emissions. The share of international truck emissions remained relatively low.

• Volume growth in our Parcels segment increased the emissions from external delivery partners in the Netherlands and in Belgium.

Additionally, we purchased Gold Standard credits to offset 25 kilotonnes of carbon emissions from company cars and business travel and employee commuting, resulting in net scope 3 CO₂ emissions of 162 kilotonnes (2018: 188 kilotonnes).

Part of the requirements of the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi) is listing all your significant categories for CO₂ emissions. One of those identified was CO₂ emissions arising from employee commuting. Therefore, from the base year 2017 onwards, we will include reporting on these figures in our carbon footprint. In 2019, we saw a slight increase in CO₂ emissions from employee commuting. We continue to promote public transport in order to lower these emissions.

Environmental management system

PostNL Environmental management system
2015 - 2019, as indicated

Our environmental management systems help us to continuously improve our environmental performance and management across the company. As in prior years, all PostNL employees worked in ISO14001-certified locations.